Let us examine in detail the law of June 2, 1897.[168] As we have already stated, the new law, in the first place, limits the working day for all workers; in the second place, it establishes mandatory Sunday and holiday rest. Before laying down rules concerning the quantity of working time, the law must define what precisely should be understood by working time. The new law thereupon establishes the following rule: "Working time or the number of working hours per day for each worker shall be considered that time during which, in accordance with the contract of hire, the worker is obliged to be in the premises of the establishment and at the disposal of its manager for the performance of work." Thus, all the time when the worker, according to schedule or at the demand of the manager, is in the factory, must be considered working time.

Whether the worker is engaged during this time in his proper or ordinary work, or the manager forces him to do something else, or even forces him simply to wait—this is immaterial: all time spent by the worker in the factory must be considered working time. For example, at some factories after the bell on Saturday workers clean machines; according to the law, machine cleaning must also be considered part of working time. Consequently, if the factory owner pays the worker nothing for cleaning machines, this means that the factory owner is using the working time of the hired worker for free. If the factory owner, having hired a worker at piece-rate wages, forces him to wait or diverts him from work by some extraneous task without special payment for this task (every worker knows that this happens not infrequently), this means that the factory owner is using the working time of the hired worker for free. Workers should remember this definition of working time in the new law and, relying on it, resist every attempt by the master to use working time for free. It is clear that such a definition of working time ought to follow naturally from the contract of hire: some workers might think that this is so obvious that there is nothing to discuss. But the government, currying favor with capitalists, deliberately obscures many things that are self-evident to every worker. And here too the government took pains to provide a small loophole for the factory owners. The law states that working time is considered to be that time during which, according to the contract of hire, the worker is obliged to be in the factory. But what is to be done in such a case when the contract of hire says nothing about the worker's obligation to be in the factory for so many hours per day? It frequently happens, for instance, at mechanical works, that the contract between workers and the master consists only in this: workers undertake for such-and-such wages to produce such-and-such an article (some machine part, a certain number of screws or nuts, etc.), and nothing is said about the time which the worker must spend on the work. Is the new law regarding the number of working hours per day applicable in such a case? According to common sense, of course it is applicable, for the worker is working in the factory—how could this not be considered working time? But the "common sense" of the factory owners and the government supporting them is quite peculiar. According to the letter of the article quoted by us, the law concerning the reduction of working time could easily not be applied to such cases. The factory owner can refer to the fact that in the contract he did not oblige the worker to be in the factory—and that's that. And since not every factory owner is such a clever troublemaker as to notice this trick, the officials of the Ministry of Finance hastened in advance to point out to all-Russian merchants this useful loophole in the new law. The Ministry of Finance has long been issuing a special newspaper: the "Financial Gazette, Industry and Commerce"[77]—one of those official papers which, besides announcing government decrees, endeavor to extol the successes of Russian capitalists and magnify the government's concern for the purse of bankers, factory owners, merchants, and landowners under the guise of concern for the people. Shortly after the promulgation of the new law, this newspaper published an article on the new law (No. 26 of the "Financial Gazette" for 1897), explaining its significance in detail and proving that it is precisely the role of government to care for the health of workers. It was in this very article that the officials endeavored to point out to factory owners the possibility of a loophole to circumvent the new law. In this article it is directly explained that the new law will not be applicable to those cases where the contract says nothing about working time, because when a worker undertakes for a definite task, "he appears as not a hired worker, but as a person accepting a commission." For the factory owner, then, it is not very difficult to rid himself of the unpleasant law: he need only call the worker not a worker, but a "person accepting a commission"! Instead of saying that working time is considered to be the time during which the worker is in the factory at the disposal of the master, the law, consequently, deliberately expressed itself less precisely, speaking of that time during which the worker according to the contract is obliged to be in the factory. It might seem that this is all the same, but in reality they did not disdain to employ deliberate obscurity here too, to the detriment of the workers!